ian16th Jones
Published 20 Aug 2017Refuelling at Sea and in the Air 1960’s style
July 31, 2022
Look at Life — Pipeline (1961)
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July 29, 2022
Nightmare Fuel For Soviet Submarines; the story of the Canadair CP-107 Argus
Polyus Studios
Published 4 Dec 2020Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel!
Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudiosIn its day the Argus was the most formidable anti-submarine warfare platform fielded by any NATO country. Canadair adapted the Bristol Britannia into a highly effective low and slow sub hunter. This gave Maritime Air Command the edge in the North Atlantic. It served on the front-line of the Cold War and kept the Soviet submarine threat in check for almost 25 years.
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July 24, 2022
QotD: British armour from BAOR to the first Gulf War
During the Cold War there was a clear threat in the form of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, which was lined up, facing off against BAOR [British Army of the Rhine] units. It made an enormous amount of sense to contribute to a NATO operation to deter Moscow from chancing their luck, and ensure that they could not force the border and take over Western Germany.
To that end generations of British soldiers were stationed there training for a war that they hoped would never come. To this day there are still serving Cold War veterans who even into the late 1980s knew where they would deploy to, and the likely exact spot in the field or woods where they would dig their trenches and realistically be killed.
This force though was essentially a static one, designed to operate defensively and underpinned by an enormous static logistical and support network stretching from the Inner German Border all the way back to Antwerp and then the UK. The British Army was able to sustain armour in large numbers in part because it had the threat to face, the space to operate and the support network in place to enable this to occur. To this day the subject of how well supported BAOR was through the extensive rear communications zone efforts, and the widespread workshops (such as in Belgium) designed to repair and support UK units is not widely known or told, but deserves much greater recognition.
This matters because when people look back to the size of the British Army in 1990 and look at how many tanks we had then compared to now, they forget that the Army’s MBT capability was essentially a static garrison force waiting to conduct a defensive campaign against a peer threat where it expected to take heavy losses and probably operate very quickly in an NBC environment. It was not intended to be a deployable force capable of operating across the planet on an enduring basis.
This is why when people talk about how many tanks were deployed in 1991 to the Gulf War (some 220 Challenger 1’s were deployed) they forget that this was the first time since Suez that the UK had operated heavy armour overseas. It took many months to get this force into place, and it came at the cost of gutting the operational capability of the remaining BAOR units, who found their logistical support chains hammered in order to support the forces assigned to GRANBY.
The harsh, and perhaps slightly uncomfortable reality for the UK is that OP GRANBY required nearly 6 months of build up at the cost of gutting wider armoured warfare capability – proving that away from home, having 900 tanks is irrelevant if you are operating outside normal parameters and are having to effectively cannibalise or mothball most of them to keep 220 in the Gulf.
By contrast OP TELIC saw over 100 tanks deployed, but a significantly shorter lead in time for the deployment – testament to the significant investments made in the intervening period in logistical capabilities.
Sir Humphrey, “Tanks for nothing — Why it does not matter if the British Army has fewer tanks than Cambodia”, Thin Pinstriped Line, 2019-04-24.
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July 23, 2022
Tank Chat #152 | Swiss Centurion | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 25 Mar 2022
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June 26, 2022
HMCS Ontario – Guide 148
Drachinifel
Published 12 Oct 2019HMCS Ontario, last of Canada’s cruisers and a Minotaur class vessel, is the second subject of the day.
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June 24, 2022
Tank Chat #150 Lynx C&R Vehicle | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
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June 17, 2022
Tank Chat #149 Cut in Half Centurion | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
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June 13, 2022
Lightning fast interceptor turned nuclear strike bomber: the Canadair CF-104 Starfighter
Polyus Studios
Published 29 Sep 2020Don’t forget to like the video and subscribe to my channel!
Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudiosThis is an UPDATED version of the video. It includes many changes and corrections to the original video. Many thanks to Gary Watson for all his contributions!
Starting in 1959 Canadair began building Canada’s fastest jet at their plant in Montreal. It was designed as a sleek high altitude and high speed interceptor, but was adapted for low level ground strike missions with conventional and nuclear weapons. It was the Canadair CF-104 Starfighter, Canada’s missile with a man in it.
0:00 Introduction
0:33 Historical Context
2:01 Design Choice
4:15 Canadair’s Production Run
6:50 Configuration and Specifications
11:04 Nuclear Strike Role
12:13 Operational History
16:06 Conventional Role
17:53 Retirement and Replacement
19:28 Accidents, Controversy and Legacy
22:56 ConclusionMusic:
“Denmark” – Portland Cello ProjectResearch Sources:
Canadair CF-104 Starfighter by Harold A. Skaarup (http://silverhawkauthor.com/canadian-…)
Canadair CF-104 Starfighter by Canadian Starfighter Association (http://canadianstarfighterassociation…)
CF-104 Flight Operations by Air Force Museum of Alberta (https://www.rcaf.museum/history/rcaf-…)
Story of the F-104 Starfighter in Norwegian Service by Bjorn Hafsten (http://starfighter.no/hist-en3.html)
Starfighters with Turkey by Joe Baugher (http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_fighte…)
ASN Aviation Safety Database by Aviation Safety Network (http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/d…)
Starfighter by David L. Bashow (Fortress Publication, 1990, ISBN: 0-919195-12-1)
Photography credit 6mins10sec: Gary WatsonFootage Sources:
Personal Footage – Gary Watson
Cold War Fighter Pilot – Ken Castle, CD, Flight-Lieutenant (ret’d) – Canada Aviation and Space Museum (https://youtu.be/sEUOFyPLL94)
CF 104 Baden Soellingen 1965 – Gordon Price (https://youtu.be/4UZ9PE58Eq0)
CF104 Germany 1983/4 441 Squadron CAF – Tom Hammond (https://youtu.be/xrqjAKHflCo)
Great Planes Lockheed F-104 Starfighter – Discovery Channel (1996)
Avro Canada CF 100 Canuck – Avro (1956)#Starfighter #CanadianAerospace #PolyusStudios
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June 10, 2022
QotD: Talinn, Estonia
My second impression was that it stinks, stinks of diesel exhaust. It seems they have found a way to power everything with diesel, including bicycles and pets. When I walked out of the tunnel from the ferry to land, I was engulfed in a cloud of diesel exhaust from a passing truck. I’m surprised the EU permits it, but maybe they look the other way for the former communist countries. Maybe the Estonians just cheat. Either way, it reminded me of what it was like in America in the 80’s when city buses were like crop dusters …
Rather than follow the crowd to Old Town, I went the other direction and walked a dozen blocks to the east, then another dozen blocks or so south. If you look at a map, the tourist area is to the west, so I figured the real Tallinn was to the east. Given the history and layout of the city, my guess is the east is mostly built in the 20th century, but a lot of it dates to previous centuries. Estonia was a battle ground fought over by Danes, Russians, Germans, Swedes and Poles for most of its history, so it is tough to know.
For example, I walked past an apartment building, probably built in the middle of the last century. It was the drab concrete style popular with communists. Next to it was a cool looking old wood structure that would look at home on Cape Cod. Upon closer inspection, I saw it had undergone a recent renovation, so maybe it was old, but maybe it was just made to look like it dates to the 19th century. You can’t trust anything now. Even in a place like Estonia, everything is becoming a reproduction of a long gone culture of a foreign people.
If you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Soviets, walking around this part of Tallinn is a good way to do it. You see the old buildings and dilapidated old houses. It’s not a slum, but it has that aesthetic the Soviets were so famous for back during the Cold War. Lots of concrete and gray paint. The materialism of the Bolsheviks was really just the total lack of spiritual beauty. They were ugly people and that ugliness was made manifest their building and city planning. They were vulgar and depraved.
The Z Man, “Travelogue: Talinn”, The Z Blog, 2019-04-03.
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June 8, 2022
MAC 1950: Disassembly & History
Forgotten Weapons
Published 27 Feb 2017Shooting the MAC 1950: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sduZ4…
The PA MAC 1950 (Pistolet Automatique Modele 1950) was the result of a 1946 French effort to standardize on a single military pistol. By the end of WWII, the French military had accumulated a mess of different pistols of French, Spanish, American, and German origin; officially using the Luger, P38, Mauser HSc, 1911 (and A1), 1935A, 1935S, Star, Ruby, and Model 1892 revolver.
Trials were held in 1950, although the outcome was predetermined — this pistol, designed by St Etienne and largely derived from the Model 1935S, was to be the next French military sidearm. A design from the SACM company was also tested, as was a commercially purchased SIG SP47/8, but this was for comparison sake only. In fact, the SIG was the best performer in the testing, with the St Etienne design suffering from cracked parts and durability problems. It would be improved, however, and deemed suitable for adoption by early 1951.
Production began in 1953 at the Chatellerault arsenal (hence the “MAC” name used in the US). All of 221,900 were made by Chatellerault until it was shut down in 1963, when production transferred to St Etienne, where another 120,000 would be made by 1978.
Mechanically, the gun is largely taken form the Browning 1911, with a few improvements. The recoil spring is of a captive design, and the fire control group is all built into a single easily replaced unit (similar to the Tokarev and the 1935S). It is single action only, with hammer-block and magazine safeties and a 9-round magazine of standard 9x19mm ammunition. It is still in French service, having proven to be a reliable and dependable weapon, if outdated by today’s standards.
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June 3, 2022
QotD: Snobbery and spying
Oxford and Cambridge became notorious hunting grounds for the Soviet Union, as they sought out clever young lefties who they might convince to go full retard into communism and then spy for the Motherland.
They had some success with some dapper young gentlemen called Philby, Maclean, Burgess, Blunt and Cairncross – that’s a story for another day.
It was notable that during the whole affair, British intelligence simply refused to believe that one of their own had been corrupted. They could not entertain such a notion, and so the Cambridge Five remained able to betray their country over and over again.
Alex Noble, “Hero Of The European Union”, Continental Telegraph, 2019-04-15.
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June 1, 2022
Vintage Russian T62 tanks reported in Ukraine
As with all discussions of the ongoing fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops, it’s very difficult to be sure that what is being reported is in any way accurate — both sides pulled out all the stops on the PR/propaganda/disinformation machinery months ago. At Thin Pinstriped Line, Sir Humphrey seems to be convinced that the reports that the Russians have been dis-interring mothballed Soviet-era T62 tanks to send into combat in Ukrane are believable enough:
“Soviet T-62M MBT Standard Battle Tank” by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. is marked with CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/?ref=openverse.
The Russian Army has taken such significant losses of materiel that it has been forced to pull vintage T62 tanks from reserve, and commit them to front line operations. This statement makes plain just how costly the Russian advances have been in the Donbas area, and raises questions about what, if any, value, there is from retaining a war reserve of vehicles and equipment.
It is difficult to get an accurate picture on just how disastrous the Russian losses have been so far in the war, but most estimates suggest that at least 700 tanks have been destroyed, with many more damaged or captured. Each loss represents not only a small reduction in combat capability to Russia, but usually a far more valuable, and irreplaceable crew.
Russia is not a nation that likes to throw military equipment away, far from it. Their equipment is designed to be simple, reliable and last a very long time. As the outstandingly good website WW2 after WW2, which keeps track of what happened to military equipment after the war, lovingly documents, Soviet era equipment from WW2 just kept going (note, do not click on the link unless you wish to be sucked into a very big time sink!).
With huge reserves of people, no constraints on space or spending, and a mentality of “stores are for storing, not scrapping”, Russia has long kept ancient and utterly obsolete equipment in storage depots long past the point of being of any meaningful value. It is almost certain that there are still Russian Army depots out there with WW2 era equipment waiting for a recall to the colours if required.
The challenge facing Russia though is that due to the rampant corruption, the inability to hold units to account and ensure that readiness is tested, and just the sheer scale of the stockpile, most of the vehicles in their arsenal are probably not combat ready, and have probably been cannibalized beyond repair. Despite having thousands of T72 and T80 in service and storage, it seems that they are not deployable.
This poses a real challenge for Russia on two fronts – firstly, to bring the T62 out of retirement and into front line service as attrition reserves poses a significant support challenge. The vehicle is not compatible with later models of Russian tanks, so will require bespoke logistics support – placing further pressure on the already creaking supply chain.
Additionally, although simple to operate, it still requires crew to use it – with four, instead of three crew needed, this poses an additional headache for the Russian Army, which will have to find 25% uplift in tank crews to operate them properly. At a time when the Russians are low on people, and have churned through a significant proportion of their main army, it will require extraordinary efforts to find bodies to crew these tanks.
Bodies is perhaps the operative word here, for this is likely to be the fate of the crew in these vehicles. The T62 is utterly outclassed and completely obsolete for the environment in which it is operating. It may be good for gunning down demonstrators or strangling democratic protests in third world nations (the joy of socialist dictatorships), but against a highly experienced army, fighting with advanced equipment to defend its homeland, it is utterly hopeless. While it can still have some effect, the T62 units going into action are certain to be outclassed, outgunned and out of time when they face the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Update: After I scheduled this post for publication, I saw that Berhard Kast (Military History Visualized) had posted a video analyzing the evidence, which you can check out here.
Update, 1 June: Apparently it helps when you include the link to the original post. Who knew?
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May 31, 2022
A new history of the evil empire. No, not that one. Not that one either. The other evil empire!
In The Critic, Barnaby Crowcroft reviews Caroline Elkins’ new history of the British empire, Legacy of Violence:
Elkins is correct that British decolonisation after the end of the war — if not “white-washed” — has got off lightly among historians, often via a contrast with the dreadful behaviour of the French. We remain far too influenced by the impression that Britain willingly and amicably handed over power (as Harold Macmillan put it) to Asian and African representatives of “agreeable, educated, Liberal, North Oxford society”.
There is a single map in this book which should definitively dispose of such ideas, showing all the colonial conflicts and states of emergency Britain was engaged in around the world after 1945. There are the well-known counterinsurgencies in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. Alongside other, less well-known ones, however — British Guiana, Malaysia, Belize, Oman and the New Hebrides — bring us pretty much into the 1980s without a single year of global colonial peace.
In Kenya and Malaya, the British carried out massive coercive interventions in the 1950s, including the forcible resettlement of over a million people into closely monitored “new villages”, which, if they cannot be likened to concentration camps, certainly resemble the kinds of things the French were doing in Algeria. Difficult though it is to believe today, until very recently the British were a “warlike” and patriotic people, and their agents could be ruthless in the pursuit of imperial interest overseas.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to take seriously the more grandiose claims of Legacy of Violence, including Elkins’ presumption to have uncovered the Key to All Mythologies of British imperial wickedness in the form of Liberalism and Racism. The prose is part of the problem. Her introductory statement of the book’s bombastic aims reads more like something written by a professional satirist, than a professional historian.
“To study the British empire,” she writes, “is to unlock memory’s gate using the key of historical enquiry. But once inside, history’s fortress is bewildering … Unlike mythical fire-breathing monsters, however, the creatures inhabiting the annals of Britain’s imperial past are not illusions [but] monstrosities [which] inflicted untold suffering …”
Much of the book is given over to a plodding chronicle of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British history, in which events are construed — and often misconstrued — to give the meanest possible interpretation. British “arch-imperialists” resemble cartoon villains, who wear “Hitleresque moustaches” and “racist coattails” and are awarded MBEs and OBEs according to how much harm they inflict upon colonial subjects. There is even an imaginative reconstruction of British pilots all but laughing as they machine-gun “defenceless women and children”; readers are invited to listen to their “screams of pain”.
To determine whether Britain’s empire was uniquely violent invites the question: compared to what? Niall Ferguson earned opprobrium for suggesting in 2003 that alongside the rival empires which arose to challenge it in the middle of the twentieth century, Britain’s looked pretty attractive.
To her credit, Elkins does not disagree with this. Her treatment of Malaya’s communist insurgency suggests that she is not particularly exercised by violence when it is committed by ideological confrères. The only thing we get in the way of any broader comparison, however, is the notably wishy-washy one implied between the “East and the West”, which she describes as the contrast between “humanity and inhumanity”.
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May 26, 2022
The Banshee | Artifacts Interview Series
Legion Magazine
Published 15 Mar 2019Legion Magazine‘s Stephen J. Thorne sat down with Andrew Burtch, the Post-1945 historian at the Canadian War Museum, to discuss what was the crown jewel of the Royal Canadian Navy’s air fleet – the Banshee. Video edited by Adam Tindal.
For more information, visit: www.legionmagazine.com/artifacts
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May 20, 2022
The Cold War Legend That Delivered SAUSAGES To Tanks | Forces TV
Forces News
Published 26 Apr 2018To British troops based in north Germany in the last two decades of the Cold War, he was a legend. But this was no commando or member of the special forces.
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